Tendril Home Energy Management

SpireMedia 2008

When this project came up, connected devices and appliances were not yet mainstream. It was exciting to have such a forward-looking project.

We were tasked with creating a web-based portal where users could manage their home's energy usage. Our goal was to make it so that users wouldn't need to manage their appliances' energy all of the time. Instead, we aimed to create a set of rules users could use to control appliances' behavior based on different pricing structures.

For example, a user who wants to save money or energy could set rules so his dishwasher operated only at night. A user could also set a rule to have all of their appliances turn off except for their refrigerator when the grid experienced a high demand spike, lessening their load on the grid. Additionally, people would have insights into how much energy their different appliances used both in real time and through monthly summaries of their usage.